All aboard the Bada Bing Bus

‘Can anyone name Tony Soprano’s horse?’ says Marc Baron, our tour guide, standing in the aisle of a leaking coach at the start of The Sopranos Bus Tour of New Jersey. The answer of course is Pie-O-My, and because we’re all addicts of the TV series, The Sopranos, we all know the name and shout it out.

The Sopranos are New Jersey gangsters with suburban issues. The show finished its US run a few weeks ago and the adventures of Tony Soprano, an obese but strangely sexy Mafia boss, are now sleeping with the fishes — but the fans take longer to die. The last episode will air in Britain in September and I am on the Bada Bing Bus (the Bada Bing is Tony’s lap-dancing club) with a damp assortment of English, Dutch and Australian coach-potatoes. None of us has seen the last episode yet, but already we’re in mourning for Tony & co. It is raining great pasta pots.

Before we head off to the International House of Pancakes, Joseph Gannasacoli, who played a gay mobster called Vito, appears on the coach. Gannasacoli has written A Meal to Die For, ‘a cookbook novel about a chef who cooks for the mob’. He wrote it to celebrate losing 160 pounds of fat after stomach surgery. ‘Hello, my friends,’ he says, and produces copies of his book. So we pay him $25 dollars for his cookbook novel; he smiles uneasily and leaves. ‘OK,’ says Marc (‘OK’ is his favourite word). ‘We are now going to play the credits for the first episode.’ The credits roll on the bus’s TV and we clap like idiots as we head for New Jersey.